Concerns about potential structural failure

The collapse
of the Morandi bridge in Genoa has spread concern about the safety of
infrastructures in Italy. The bridge carried a major road, the A10 toll
motorway, which serves the Italian Riviera and links northern Italy to France.
43 people were killed in the bridge disaster and hundreds of citizens were left
without a home. What now worries Italians is that around 70 per cent of Italy’s
15,000 motorway bridges and tunnels are more than 40 years old, and there is no
certainty about their state of maintenance. Moreover, most Italian bridges were
built during the post-war boom and now carry far more traffic than they were
designed for. The main concern is that disasters like the one in Genoa might
happen again due to lack of investment, poor maintenance and, in some cases,
the involvement of mafia-run building companies that use poor quality concrete
to increase profits.

Experts
warned that up to 300 bridges, viaducts and tunnels in Italy are at risk of
structural failure. Among the structures at risk there is the Magliana Bridge
in Rome, between the city centre and the capital’s busiest airport, Fiumicino.

According to
the newspaper “Il Tempo” there are 11 thousand unsafe bridges in Italy.

The
government has set up a commission to examine the causes of the disaster.
Investigators are studying what may have caused the collapse of the 260ft-long
portion of the motorway, causing 35 cars and several trucks to plunge from the
bridge.

Luigi Di
Maio, deputy prime minister and the leader of the Five Star Movement, accused
Autostrade per l’Italia, the private company that managed the Genoa bridge - of
making profits at the expense of public safety. Autostrade operates nearly
2,000 miles of Italian motorways, and is controlled by the Benetton group
through its holding company, Atlantia. Mr Di Maio accused previous Italian
governments of turning a blind eye to the upkeep of the country’s motorways
because of political contributions. Di Maio stated that Autostrade was
protected by previous governments and said he wanted to revoke the contract awarded
to Autostrade and hit the company with a massive fine of 150 million euros.

Autostrade
denied accusations that it had not invested enough in maintenance, and insisted
the bridge had been constantly under control. According to the company over one
billion euros a year have been invested in the security, maintenance and
strengthening of the network, over the last five years.

However, an
engineering report released in 2009 studied the possibility of the bridge being
demolished because of concerns over its structural integrity.

The five-star
movement’s position is less clear then it seems, as, reportedly, in 2013 the
founder of Five Star movement, Beppe Grillo, had opposed plans to build a new
motorway that would have alleviated pressure on the Morandi bridge and
dismissed warnings that the bridge could collapse as fake news on his
widely-read blog.

The Genoa
bridge collapse was also predicted by one leading industrialist when the plans
for the new motorway were blocked.